ANNUAL ADDEESS EEAD BEFOEE 

 THE ''SOUTH AFEICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY," 



On Wednesday, July 28Tir, 1886, 

 By Professor MacOwan, F.L.S., F.E.H.S., «S:c. 



PEESONALIA OF BOTANICAL COLLECTOES AT THE 



CAPE. 



.It has been the custom that the President of this Society should, at 

 the close of his term of office, present some subject with which he is 

 familiar, in such form as to interest the members about to elect his 

 successor. The excellent purpose to which this usage may be turned 

 n eeds no better example than the masterly rhium; of observations upon 

 '' Protective Eesemblances in Animals "to which we listened last 5^ear 

 in this place. Looking over the report of Mr. Trimen's address, I 

 certainly felt considerable misgivings as to the possibilit}^ of presenting 

 you with anything so interesting from the domain of the study which 

 habitually occupies my thoughts. Descriptive botany is not without 

 its attractions, but to appreciate them one must, like the neophytes at 

 Eleusis, have endured liardness, have passed through many grades of 

 botanical free-masonry ; and at the best one can only expect to be 

 tolerated, not ap]3lauded, by others than the initiated few. I have 



. therefore dismissed the idea of presenting you with an account of tliis 

 year's botanical progress in Soutli Africa, and then passing on to the 

 larger work of the great centres of scientific activity. There is, how- 

 ever, a very modest little mine of research in which I have now and 

 then adventured some labour, namely, the compilation of personalia 

 respecting the worthy men who by their life-long enthusiasm have 

 made Cape Botany what it is at this day. You take up the three 

 bulky volumes of the Flora Cap/'mis, with their curt biographies of 

 four thousand six hundred species, and are informed that fully four 

 volumes, j^et unwritten, would be required to complete the tale of 

 plants that crowd this botanically wealthiest of the world's corners. 

 Unless I am much mistaken, as yom- eye ran over this species from 

 Namaqualand and that from the Transkei, and hosts of others, from 

 out-of-the-way places, whither only the Mounted Police and the 

 process-server find a road, you would inquire: ''Who are the men 



, that patiently accumulated these materials, toiling at a task promising 

 scant fame and scantier pecuniary recompense ? " That is what I 

 propose to tell you to-night, in so far as I liave been able to find the 

 answer for myself, that is, very imperfectly, for comparatively little 

 stands on record, although some of these men lived their hard lives in 

 our very midst not more than thirty years ago. 



It is one thing to be a botanist, a passed master in the science, at 

 the head of a botanical department in some wealthy university or well 

 endowed museum, whose patrons are princes, and be able to command 

 the consecutive leisure which goes to the authorship of a great descrip- 



